If It Damns Obama It Doesn’t Have To Be True
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Remember when Candidate McCain accused Candidate Obama of having caused a rise in the price of gasoline? Beyond establishing the old man as an idiot who has no idea about how Capitalism works or about the laws of supply and demand in a free market, I have to wonder if that was the beginning of the end of any attempt to tie political rhetoric to any degree of truth, even selected truth, because if it damns Obama it doesn’t have to be true. Not a bit.
Lead is bad for you, if you’re a living thing that is, and the EPA has long been trying to get rid of the stuff which shows up in Arctic ice and indeed everywhere in the world, a remnant from the tetra ethyl lead anti-knock additives that we took out of gasoline decades ago before Obama had a drivers license.
Certainly the people who make and use lead have put up resistance to having to spend the money to clean up the waste produced by heavy metal smelting and mining, but up to now, they’ve had to pretend it somehow wasn’t really poison or some other nonsensical bit of deviousness and Denialism. But things are different now. We have Obama, the prime mover of all things nasty and unAmerican. The universal distraction and none of your facts have to be facts. If it damns Obama, it doesn’t have to be true.
Obama just banned bullets scream the Republican rabble, and we’re all going to die. Not only doesn’t it have to be true, the more absurd, the better and the more fun to believe and to pass on to your friends. “Bury ammo in your back yard. It will be all gone soon!” And people are already buying up containers to hide it in while the people who sell it smile
I used to live in Galena, Illinois where lead mining went back before white people arrived and where by the late 1960’s, nearly all the lead mines had closed or ceased operations because, even with a war on, with the advent of unleaded gas, lead was too cheap to be profitable
So when Doe Run, the last American producer of lead from ore decided after decades of obstinate refusal to cooperate with the EPA, to pay a fine and close the Herculaneum plant in Missouri instead of spending the money to comply, the you-know-who party sensed a windfall. They could use it to accuse Obama-the-tyrant of a sneaky gun-control gambit by making it impossible to produce lead bullets. A perfect opportunity save for the fact that it’s not true and even the NRA and ammunition manufacturers confirm it. There will be no shortage of lead in our time and no shortage of bullets. No shortage of lies
My mailbox, much like any other toxic waste dump, fills up with hysterical and dishonest and borderline psychotic invective like this about Obama weakening the country, crippling the military and violating the constitution in his inimitable and tyrannical way by making it illegal to produce lead. Complete with pictures of uniformed men slaughtering civilians, the Blog post insists it’s part of Obama’s obsessive drive to kill us all after taking our guns and ammo. Sadly the meme has made it’s way into the culture and although it lacks any connection with the truth, it’s become source material. It’s another GOP gospel. Like the lead in the atmosphere, soil and water, it’s all over the place and can’t be killed. Nearly all the lead we use comes from recycling — 98% of it –and the primary mining of lead ore is barely profitable even when EPA laws are ignored.
The impending closure of the Herculaneum plant has its origins in a 2004 lawsuit filed against the EPA by the Missouri Coalition for the Environment in the home state of the Doe Run Company. The environmental group argued that the EPA had failed its responsibility under the Clean Air Act to review and revise, if necessary, the air quality standards for lead every five years. In 2005, a U.S. District Court in Missouri agreed and ordered the EPA to conduct such a review, giving the agency until September 2008 to comply. They chose not to, and likely because of economic reasons having to do with supply and demand. The cost of reclaimed lead is just too cheap and it’s too abundant and market forces are what they are. Barack Obama had nothing to do with it but unfortunately liars and saboteurs and insurgents are what they are.
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“Clinton left office with a budget surplus”
Clinton in fact left office having increased the debt $1.6 trillion dollars, by running 8 years of constant deficits. Check the Treasure Department figures. Clinton only has surpluses if the cook the books and don’t count some of his spending.
As for Bush’s tax cuts (a package mostly for the middle class), it came later… and afterwards, revenues kept rising.
” The Tea Party and the far right think that Obama is a socialistic far left liberal”
Obama does too: he has openly claimed that if he could, he would take control of healthcare away from the people and have a single-payer system of healthcare. A situation where the rulers control something instead of the people: pure socialism.
“Actually, if we went back four decades he would be considered a moderate Republican”
No, he would be considered a leftist Democrat, as the majority consider him to be now.
Wow. A Republican! Of course everything you have written has come, at one time or another, from a Fox News Script, or talking points of the RNC. Most of us on the Left are actually VERY disappointed that Obama didn’t work to enact a single-payer system. It works and who gives a fuck if it’s “socialist.” Government is for the people to help the people, not to serve the corporations.
Everybody’s a fucking economics professor. And of course everything an elected government does is tyrannical because, right? But why argue with these people when the Bible, the sacred word of almighty God says to kill them?
OK Idiot, this is a fact that even the Republicans acknowledged. Yes Clinton left office with a budget surplus. You are so out of touch with reality you probably do not know which end is up. Many of the programs Obama has proposed have been the same ones that have been proposed by Republicans in the 1990’s. I think you probably need to go live with Clyde Bundy.
In the 1960’s and 1970’s, you seem to forget the Republicans were on board with the Civil Rights Act, the Aid for Dependent Children, and a number of other social welfare programs.
IDIOT.. A single payer system would not be taking anything from the people. Medicare has been one of the most successful programs in the world and it is a single payer system. If you doubt that just try to take it away from the senior citizens.
You tell him/her Bill!
Bill has educated me again! I can add no more than say correct – both to the article and Bill.
I will first respond to Timmy there. Actually this level of insanity started gearing up about the year 2000, ironically, or not, the beginning of the Bush Administration. Clinton left office with a budget surplus so Bush came in with the typical Republican focus of cutting taxes. But he did not just cut taxes, he took a meat cleaver to them. This might have worked out OK for a little while but then, the Twin Tower destruction occurred on 9/11/01. This country went ape shit. Suddenly, the home of the brave, and the strong, and the country with such high principles failed its first real test since WWII. The people became scared mice who would do anything to save themselves. There were no more principles. Everyone jumped aboard the Patriot Act train and gave up much of the freedoms we had. Any one who question what the government was doing was suddenly unpatriotic, which was pretty much like calling your mother a whore and a bitch,, and a slut. Then we got snookered into going to war in Iraq along with going into Afghanistan. The problem was the Bush Administration was fighting these wars on a credit card and not even paying the interest. Then people began to understand that they had been snookered by Bush and Cheney and it was time for a new president. While the people were trying to decide on the new president the bottom fell out of the economy, and we were still fighting two wars on credit cards. This is like, you know, you are going along with your day to day life and you run into these two drop dead gorgeous women who want to screw you to death o n the same day. So your set both them up in their own place so you can see them as your leisure. You went from paying for one household to paying for three household without any increase in revenue. SO, you know, you can see how that can run up your debt pretty quick.
The new president comes in and people just can not believe what just happened. You mean that America just elected a n, eh, hmm. a black man as president. This just can not be true. This is wrong on so many levels. Mitch McConnell, the senate minority leader said, on the first day the senate met after the election, “We will just have to make sure he is a one term president.” Rush Limbaugh, the bloated unofficial spokesman for far right said, “We must do everything necessary to ensure that he (the president) fails.” Even some the Democrats, Obama’s own party were not comfortable with him in the White House.
So, Timmy, just so you will understand, this entire division really comes down to race primarily. At in the beginning. Later on people started to wail and gnash their teeth over the budget deficit which, of course, goes back to the two mistresses of Bush and Cheney. The Tea Party and the far right think that Obama is a socialistic far left liberal. Actually, if we went back four decades he would be considered a moderate Republican. But, people today want to interpret the Constitution the way they see it, not by the words themselves or within the construct of what the writers might have perceived the world to be like at the time they wrote it.
That about sums it up Bill. Thanks man.
I thought they just closed the steam plant in Herculaneum. As far as I know their main plant is still pumping poison.
I never understood the connection between this president and the gun control meme, which is why this article is spot-on. Barack Obama is not an open advocate of gun control. He pays lip service to the left with talk about background checks and etc., but he has never advocated any form of control beyond that. This is something the Right has made up out of whole cloth. It’s a lie. Brilliant article.
What’s happened to this country? Why don’t I remember this level of insanity before 2000?
Like the religious reich, fact are not important if you can spread the “faith”. I am personally disgusted by what the Republican party has become and the divisiveness level of the political scene in the USA.
Like Rome, the USA will fall from within. The jackals are gathering now to pick over the remains.
Better study your Chinese. That will be the next major world power. Really, it is already.
James, I would like to copy and paste this reply to my Facebook wall. I won’t do so until I get permission from you, but I think it’s very true and relevant. Please respond 🙂
Marsha all comments on this site are in the domain and you may copy and paste as you wish. I am quite certain James will not mind.
Thanks, Mike. I’m thinking about it, I probably should’ve asked you to start with 🙂
No worries. I saw it and looks good. James you can be proud man!